Fancher Butte, Steptoe of Eastern Washington: Witness to Weapons of War 1858 and 1958
Faculty Mentor
Chad Pritchard
Document Type
Poster
Start Date
10-5-2023 9:00 AM
End Date
10-5-2023 10:45 AM
Location
PUB NCR
Department
Geosciences
Abstract
On September 1, 1858, Fancher Butte, a Steptoe peak near Medical Lake and Four Lakes, Washington, bore witness to a hard-fought battle between elements of the United States Army and an alliance of Native American tribes. Although both forces were numbered between 500 to 700 men, it was the U.S. Army’s advanced weaponry that gave them the advantage over their strategically fierce adversaries. The U.S. Army used the Springfield Model 1855 rifle-musket and its newly crafted Minié Ball could inflict a fatal shot at a range of 944 meters (1000 yards), five times that of a bow and arrow and the outdated muskets of the Native American warriors, and two 12-pound Mountain Howitzers could fire a volley of one round per minute with an effective range of 1536 meters (1680 yards). With these weapons, U.S. forces prevailed in the Battle of Four Lakes in what was one of the final battles in the three-year-old Yakima War. One hundred years later, on June 14, 1958, the second-generation guided surface-to-air missile system, the Nike Atlas E(S) (Hercules), designed to destroy the Soviet Union's ability to deliver nuclear weapons on the sovereignty of the United States, was designated for Site F-45, a position on top of Olson Hill, 3.6 kilometers, (2.25 miles) east of Fancher Butte. The Nike Atlas (Hercules) missile, the most technologically advanced surface-to-air missile at the time, had a range of over 120.7 km (75 miles) and a top speed of Mach 3.65 or 4356.5 kilometers per hour (2707 mph). This project was done to help current geological research understand how dramatically humans have altered isolated buttes in eastern Washington.
Recommended Citation
Legg, Betsy, "Fancher Butte, Steptoe of Eastern Washington: Witness to Weapons of War 1858 and 1958" (2023). 2023 Symposium. 51.
https://dc.ewu.edu/srcw_2023/res_2023/p1_2023/51
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Fancher Butte, Steptoe of Eastern Washington: Witness to Weapons of War 1858 and 1958
PUB NCR
On September 1, 1858, Fancher Butte, a Steptoe peak near Medical Lake and Four Lakes, Washington, bore witness to a hard-fought battle between elements of the United States Army and an alliance of Native American tribes. Although both forces were numbered between 500 to 700 men, it was the U.S. Army’s advanced weaponry that gave them the advantage over their strategically fierce adversaries. The U.S. Army used the Springfield Model 1855 rifle-musket and its newly crafted Minié Ball could inflict a fatal shot at a range of 944 meters (1000 yards), five times that of a bow and arrow and the outdated muskets of the Native American warriors, and two 12-pound Mountain Howitzers could fire a volley of one round per minute with an effective range of 1536 meters (1680 yards). With these weapons, U.S. forces prevailed in the Battle of Four Lakes in what was one of the final battles in the three-year-old Yakima War. One hundred years later, on June 14, 1958, the second-generation guided surface-to-air missile system, the Nike Atlas E(S) (Hercules), designed to destroy the Soviet Union's ability to deliver nuclear weapons on the sovereignty of the United States, was designated for Site F-45, a position on top of Olson Hill, 3.6 kilometers, (2.25 miles) east of Fancher Butte. The Nike Atlas (Hercules) missile, the most technologically advanced surface-to-air missile at the time, had a range of over 120.7 km (75 miles) and a top speed of Mach 3.65 or 4356.5 kilometers per hour (2707 mph). This project was done to help current geological research understand how dramatically humans have altered isolated buttes in eastern Washington.
